Picture the scene: it is freezing in the Atlas Mountains. The wood burning stove is on, there are still a couple of Christmas Quality Street left, Squeaky the Cat and Rasputim are lying on my belly.

I get up to feed the fire when, from nowhere, disaster strikes. My left big toe catches in my right pyjama leg, propelling me knees first onto the concrete floor.

Calamity

There I am crawling around swearing and howling, when suddenly I look down and see that my left big toe is a zig zag. I’ve totally dislocated it. The cats are eyeing me, and the toe, askance.

I am still in shock so, without hesitating or thinking, I grab the offending digit and push it across and back into place. There is a gruesome grind and a sickening click and hey presto! I have a sad but straight toe again.

Thank the Lord for adrenaline because ten minutes later there is no way I could have done it. And now just the thought of it and the memory of the grind and click makes me queasy.

If you like gruesome tales of body parts, I have gory feet details in my description of running the Marathon des Sables (also a toe-tal nightmare) in Adventures in Morocco.